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Not a sermon for Christmas Day, but a conversation I had with sociologist and broadcaster Laurie Taylor on God and godlessness. It was one in a ‘daisy chain’ of discussions on belief organized by 5×15 at the Wellcome Collection in London in December 2012. The daisy chain featured, as well as Laurie Taylor and myself, Laurie’s son Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the RSA, Nick Spencer, director of research at the religious think tank Theos, and Linda Woodhead, Professor of the […]

I have been publishing on Pandaemonium a series of ‘lost pages’ from The Quest for a Moral Compass, my forthcoming book on the history of moral thought, due to be published in April. In completing the book, I had to cut the original manuscript quite considerably. Much of what has been lost is better off left on the cutting room floor. There are, however, some sections coherent enough to be worth reading. Previous such ‘lost pages’ included abandoned sections on Machiavelli, Descartes, John Locke, Greek cynics, atomists, skeptics and […]

This is the second part of my essay on ‘God and evil’, exploring the problem of evil for Christianity and other monotheistic religions. The first part, which I published on Sunday, looked at the question of Original Sin. This second part examines the idea of Satan, and the tension in monotheistic religions between the idea that God is a necessary bulwark against evil (‘If God does not exist, everything is permitted’) and the fact that belief in God leads many to accept […]

No, not a screed on the evils of religion, but an exploration of how monotheistic faiths (and Christianity in particular) account for evil in the world. It is another in the ‘Lost Pages’ series – sections of The Quest for a Moral Compass, my book on the global history of ethics, that I had to cut from the final version for reasons of space. Previous excerpts were on Machiavelli, Descartes, Locke and Greek cynics, skeptics, atomists and relativists. Since this extract is long, […]

A few months ago I chose five books to illustrate the idea of morality without God for The Browser’s Five Books interviews. Now, Richard Harries, the former Bishop of Oxford, has picked his list of five works through which to introduce Christianity. One book is common to both lists: Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. It is not surprising that both Harries and I should so treasure Dostoevsky’s last and greatest novel. There are few writers who possess the psychological power and the unnerving eye of Dostoevsky, few […]

Like a lion, perhaps, in a den of Daniels, I gave a talk last week on ‘Why I am an atheist’ to theology students at Bristol’s Trinity College. It was an enjoyable event, and hopefully helped me to think through and sharpen my arguments (though not, I suspect, to change anyone’s mind). Here’s the transcript. There are three kinds of arguments that an atheist can make in defence of the insistence that no God exists. First, he or she can argue […]

TWO SEVEN-YEAR-OLDS IN THE BACK OF THE CAR DEBATING GOD: C: I don’t believe in God. A: I do. C: So where does he live? A: In the sky, of course. C: So why have astronauts never seen him? A: They were probably too busy doing things. C: No they weren’t. They’re always looking out of the window in a rocket. A: How do you know? C: I’ve seen Apollo 13.

The latest strip from the irrepressible Jesus and Mo may seem like a typical dig at the inconsistencies and illogicalities of religious faith. But, in its own inimitable way, it taps into one of the most difficult theological conumdrums for believers. A common argument in the increasingly tedious ‘God Wars’ is the claim by believers that atheists are naive about religious belief. They read holy books too literally and think of God as an old man with a white beard. […]

I was asked by the The Browser, a wonderful, indispensable website that trawls the web and fishes out some of the best writing, to choose, for its ‘Five books’ section, five books (naturally) on morality without God. Here’s my somewhat eclectic list and the interview that accompanies it. Many believers think that the only way to be truly moral is to follow a religion which teaches us morality. How would you respond? One of the great selling points of religions – […]

Continuing the series of extracts from the book that I am writing on the history of moral thought, I have reached Chapter 9, a chapter that explores medieval Christian thought, and in particular the work of Thomas Aquinas, perhaps the greatest of Christian theologians. Western Christendom had recently rediscovered Aristotle, largely through translations from the Muslim world. Aquinas found in Aristotle both a reason for, and a means to, transform the traditional relationship between reason and faith in Christian theology. For Augustine and […]

UPDATE: this post won the 2011 3QD Politics and Social Sciences Prize. In the warped mind of Anders Behring Breivik, his murderous rampage in Oslo and Utoøya were the first shots in a war in defence of Christian Europe. Not a religious war but a cultural one. Breivik acknowledged that he was not religious but, he wrote in his manifesto in a section entitled ‘Distinguishing between cultural Christendom and religious Christendom’: Myself and many more like me do not necessarily […]

In the series of extracts I’m running from my still-being-written book on the history of moral thought, I have reached Chapter 8, which explores the struggle between the Rationalists and the Traditionalists in early Islam, and the significance of that struggle not just to Islam but to Christianity and to the development of modern secularism too. The expansion of the Islamic empire from India to Iberia created new political tensions and theological dilemmas. It also created new kinds of administrative […]

The New Statesman asked various people from AC Grayling to PZ Myers to explain why they did not believe in God. This is my response. The full set of replies is here. I am an atheist because I see no need for God. Without God, it is said, we cannot explain the creation of the cosmos, anchor our moral values or infuse our lives with meaning and purpose. I disagree. Invoking God at best highlights what we cannot yet explain […]

Continuing the series of extracts from the book that I am writing on the history of moral thought, here is an an excerpt from Chapter 7, a chapter that explores the origins of Islam and of Islamic ethics. (Sharp-eyed readers of this blog might have noticed that Chapter 6 is missing from the series. That chapter explores early ethical thought in India and China and for pragmatic reasons I will not be writing it till later.) THERE WAS NOTHING ABOUT MUHAMMAD’S […]

Chapter Five of the book that I am writing on the history of moral thought explores the idea of evil within monotheistic religion. It opens with the Book of Job, in my eyes the most eloquent book in the Bible, and the one that gets to the heart of the problem of evil for a faith that believes in a omnipotent, omniscient, totally benevolent God: how could such a God allow the righteous and the innocent to suffer? Chapter 5 […]